Nutritional assessment in geriatric cancer patients.

INTRODUCTION: Geriatric patients are not defined by their age but by their general profile. Aging is characterized by loss of organ function together with a reduced capability for adapting to changes in the environment (loss of homeostatic mechanisms) leading to frailty. In the older patient with cancer, there can be problems of dietary intake next to the effects of aging per se. On top of this situation, the deleterious effects of the inflammatory processes induced by the tumor are superimposed. When these changes are translated into nutritional concepts, it is clear that, in the older cancer patient, there is a strong overlap of starvation, sarcopenia, and cachexia. DISCUSSION: Nutritional assessment should be part of the routine preliminary evaluation of the older oncology patient. Difference should be made between assessment of risk and actual nutritional status, which should be assessed with specific malnutrition indices. Body weight assessment with specific attention to unintended weight loss is essential in this evaluation. One should recognize the fact that body mass index (BMI) should be interpreted with caution, but that a low value for BMI still heralds an increased malnutrition risk. This increased alertness for nutritional problems has a lot to offer in the willingness for early intervention. The nutritional assessment, however, must be framed in a larger comprehensive geriatric assessment addressing several functional domains.